15 dead in Taipei TransAsia flight crash

2/4/2015 3:36:01 PM

Taipei: 15 people died in a plane crash in Taiwan’s capital of Taipei. The flight with 58 people on board clipped a bridge shortly after takeoff and crashed into a river.

The death toll in the TransAsia Airways flight was expected to increase as rescue crews cleared the mostly sunken fuselage in the Keelung River a couple yards from the shore. Taiwan's civil aviation authority said 28 people, including those killed in the crash, had been pulled from the fuselage and 30 were unaccounted for.

The French-Italian-built ATR 72 prop aircraft was flying on its side with one wing scraping past Taiwan's busy National Freeway No. 1 just before it plunged into the river, local television images showed. The plane had taken off Taipei's Sungshan Airport en route to the outlying Taiwan-controlled Kinmen islands.

The plane's wing also hit a taxi, the driver of which was injured, on the freeway just before it crashed into the river, Taiwanese broadcaster TVBS reported.

Taiwan's Ministry of National Defense said it had sent 165 people and eight boats to the riverside rescue scene, joining fire department rescue crews.
A TransAsia media office declined comment on possible reasons for the crash.